Deserted Places: Nevada

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Two and a half hours outside Las Vegas, near the intersection of U.S. Route 95 and State Route 266, stands a small abandoned building that used to host the legendary Cottontail Ranch brothel. The brothel opened in 1967 on leased federal land from the Bureau of Land Management by madam Beverly Harrell, a Jewish girl from Brooklyn and former dancer.

In its early days one of the most faithful customers was billionaire aviator Howard Hughes who would make several visits while he was living in nearby Las Vegas. He would fly there are a small airstrip exists next to the brothel.

While Cottontail Ranch was licensed as prostitution is legal in the state of Nevada, the bureau of Land Management evicted her in the 1970's when word leaked of the government's role. In 1974, Harrell attempted to run for a Nevada Assembly seat in 1974 gaining national attention.

The madam died in 1995 and the brothel finally closed in 2004. Since then it remains abandoned.

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Ryan Michael/Wikimedia Commons

RAISE THE STAKES PROJECTS/JAM PRESS/thesun.co.uk

Monday, October 24, 2016

The ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada

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Rhyolite, Nevada has been called "the most photographed ghost town in the West". Built in 1905, in the edge of Death Valley, 120 miles (190 km) northwest of Las Vegas, Rhyolite was one of several mining camps that sprang up during gold rush.

Starting as a two-man camp in January 1905, Rhyolite became a town of 1,200 people in two weeks and reached a population of 2,500 by June 1905. By then it had 50 saloons, 35 gambling tables, cribs for prostitution, 19 lodging houses, 16 restaurants, half a dozen barbers, a public bath house, and a weekly newspaper, the Rhyolite Herald. Industrialist Charles M. Schwab bought the Montgomery Shoshone Mine in 1906 and invested heavily in infrastructure, including piped water, electric lines and railroad.

Rhyolite in 1907 had concrete sidewalks, electric lights, water mains, telephone and telegraph lines, daily and weekly newspapers, a monthly magazine, police and fire departments, a hospital, school, train station and railway depot, at least three banks, a stock exchange, an opera house, a public swimming pool and two formal church buildings. By 1908, Rhyolite had a population of 5,000.

Rhyolite's decline was as fast as its rise. Production in the mine fell quickly as soon as the richest ore was exhausted. Moreover, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the financial panic of 1907 made it more difficult to raise development capital and soon the company's stock value crashed. In 1911 the mine closed after operating at a loss for a few years. By then, most workers had already moved elsewhere and the town's population was below 1,000. By 1920, it was close to 0.

This is when Rhyolite started becoming an attraction as a "ghost town". The town was used as a backdrop for movies even since the silent film era, starting with The Air Mail in 1925. Other movies that followed were The Reward (1965), Cherry 2000 (1987), Six-String Samurai (1998) and The Island (2004).

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